CREATIVE ESSENTIALS (Online)
Creative Essentials: How to Care for Your Creativity When Things Falls Apart
CLASS | Thursdays, Oct. 16-Nov. 20, 2025 from 6:30-8:30pm EST
OFFICE HOURS | Tuesdays, Oct. 21-Nov. 18, 2025 from 12-1pm EST
📍ONLINE delivered via ZOOM
Facilitated by Faye D’Avanza (I&A Certified)
Sliding Scale Registration | $325 / $375 / $425
Please pay what you’re able—when you’re in a position to support more, your contribution strengthens our community and makes creative learning accessible for all.
2025 Workshop Dates/Time:
Thursdays, October 16-November 20 from 6:30-8:30pm
See weekly breakdown in class description.
2025 Office Hours
Tuesdays, October 21-November 18 from 12:00-1:00pm
Ask questions, get feedback, and stay focused. We’ll begin with a short creative healing session (10 mins) followed by open sharing and Q&A on the weekly class theme.
Policies
Cancellation and general policies can be found here.
“We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart.”
—Pema Chödron, When Things Fall Apart
What are your creative essentials? These are practices and tools that help you reclaim your power to create and experience joy not only during good times but when things fall apart. When life feels like it’s one crisis after another, and just as you gain some ground, it falls away again, it can leave you feeling exhausted, unsure, and afraid to take the next step.
But creativity is born from chaos, and it asks us to take risks to grow. And being a human is hard, especially when the world is on fire.
If you are feeling overwhelmed by the thought of caring for your creativity (Wait! Another relationship to tend?!) when you are already caring for so much, you might ask why even bother, it’s just my creativity.
Your creativity is your power.
In this 6-week workshop, you will reclaim your power to create and experience joy with essential tools for grounding your nervous system, connecting with your heart, and nourishing your body, mind, and soul in this six-week workshop to support resiliency and growth for creative seekers who are rebuilding after life has fallen apart.
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Week 1: Getting Grounded in our Creative Bodies When Things Have Fallen Apart
Week 2: The Transformative Power of Our Words to Guide Us on the Artist’s Journey
Week 3: Ask Yourself Out On an Artist Date, Then Buy Yourself Flowers
Week 4: Cultivating Your Intuition and Reclaiming Your Creative Voice with Guest Author Lindsay Mann of Mornings with the Dead
Week 5: Nourish Your Creative Practice with Community Resources + Connection
Week 6: What’s in Your Creative Essentials Toolkit?—A Show & Tell Celebration
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Offered on Tuesdays, October 21-November 18 from 12 to 1pm, pop in virtually to ask any lingering questions, get feedback, and stay focused. Sessions will begin with a short creative healing session followed by open sharing and Q&A on the weekly class theme (offered weeks 2-6).
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Anyone experiencing groundlessness or anxiety about the energy they have or don’t have to give to their creative practice
Anyone looking to get unstuck and improve their decision making skills in a fun, creative, and joyful way
Anyone who is prone to overthinking what they “should” do (in their job, business, relationships, etc.) and wants to cultivate more personal autonomy
Anyone who wants to use the creative process to cultivate a personal toolkit to support healing and growth
Anyone looking to connect with other creative seekers in a recovery or reclamation phase of their life
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A former public librarian turned creative educator, J. Faye D’Avanza is known for helping people recover and heal from creative burnout by tapping into what brings them joy through her unique blend of group facilitation, individual advising, and content creation for a growing audience of emerging and [re]emerging artists, authors, creatives, and entrepreneurs.
Her approach is rooted in bottom-up connection to creativity (body to mind) and an exploration in the interdependence that can be found when self-care is balanced with community care.
With over 20 years experience working in public libraries, managing communications and events for a woman-owned bookstore, and coaching artists and creative-based businesses through recovery after Hurricane Helene with the nonprofit Mountain BizWorks, Faye is skilled in curating and making accessible community resources, facilitating a holistic approach to the creative process, and engaging others in growing, learning, and connecting through story.
A cultural information professional, Inward & Artward certified creative facilitator, University of Chicago certified book editor, and West Asheville Yoga (RYT-200) yoga teacher-in-training, she lives among the artists, tourists, trees, and mountains of Asheville, North Carolina, and can often be found drinking a matcha latte and writing in the margins of her books.
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Supplies needed: Journal, pen/pencil, index cards, and optional various art supplies such as colored pencils, markers, watercolors, collage—anything you might use to doodle or decorate paper (more ideas and suggestions will be given in class).
Optional books to further your experience:The Artist’s Way Toolkit and The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödron, The Burnout Workbook by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski, Keep Moving by Maggie Smith, and The Artist’s Deck by Beth Pickens.
Facilitated by: Faye D’Avanza (I&A Certified)
Photo by Elin Oom Photography